061 Get It Back
The background is white. ; Panel 1 Zane opens the older book that was on the desk and starts to read. His eyebrows shoot up, his eyes become blank and terrified, and his mouth hangs open. He starts to sweat as he thinks "*No.* This is my handwriting. This is *all* my handwriting. This dream journal has at least a *month* of entries." Thin yellow lines coming from his head show the shock of this discovery. In the background, the room is rendered in mottled shades of green and blue. ; Panel 2. Zane brings the book closer to his terrified face as he thinks "These nightmares are all different. They're about thread and stitches. But the first entry... says quote Dr. Angstrom recommends keeping a *journal* to sort out my *fears*. unquote. *I've done this before.*" The background becomes a darker shade of green. ; Panel 3. Zane looks down at his book with terrified eyes. He seems extremely disturbed and is trembling and sweating heavily. He continues thinking "And the *categories* I've been trying to come up with... I already came up with them. In *this* journal. And *forgot*." The background turns an even darker shade of green. ; Panel 4. Zane continues thinking "There *is* a pattern. And my dreams *are* part of it. Then why doesn't anybody remember anything? Skip ahead.* The reader sees the two pages that Zane has opened. The pages are stained in several places with a darker color, as if the book has suffered water damage. Some of the areas on the page are cut off by the panel borders. On the left page, there's the words "Reduced my fears to 3 categories! Named them: 1. The anodyne - occurrence that is purposefully unassuming. 2. The heterodyne - occurrence that is purposefully stressed. 3. The Mnemodyne - occurrence... recalls a prior event but... changed circumstance. Underneath the third entry is another sentence that cannot be read, due to the panel border cutting it off. Next to the first sentence on the top of the page, there are two sets of five tally marks. On the right page, the diary continues with the words quote Stitches unquote or bindings that open the mouth and eyes. Underneath is an example of a kind of stitching, like a long horizontal line covered with irregular X marks. Under that is a cut-off sentence, "The mnemodyne is the stro... because it evokes a past ..." In the bottom half of the book are three sketches of the hooded skeleton Harker that he encountered in the previous book. In the first, there is a line down the middle of the head from the scalp to the chin, covered with x marks and single stitches, and the eyes have several crossed stitches over them. In the second, there is a line down the middle of the head from the scalp to the chin, covered with neat single stitches, the stitching over the eyes is done with one long stitch covered with shorter single stitches, and there is a line of Xs over the mouth. There is a third version which is not entirely visible, but shows both X marks and single stitches over the eyes. There are brackets drawn between each version, and a question mark between each of them. The background of this panel is green on the edges, but is turning into a mottled brownish-red nearer the book. ; Panel 5. Zane thinks as he reads, "Quote another bad night. The fear seems to make me remember. But it's fragmented. Is this what Virgil discovered? I think even more fear... could induce more complete memories." Zane is trembling and sweating as he reads this, although his eyes have gone back to normal. The background continues to get more brown, shading into red near the base of the panel. ; Panel 6. Zane reads aloud, "Quote what kind of fear will I have to experience... to get it *all* back?*" He sweats as he reads this, and has a dismayed expression on his face. The background is now a mottled shade of red.